Apocalypse and UFOs

The ancient Greek word for “revelation,” apocalypse originally referred to a literary genre in which mysterious revelations were given or explained by a supernatural figure such as an angel. Apocalyptic literature generally includes an ac count of an eschatological (end-time) scenario that includes wars, plagues, and other indicators of destructive violence, which is why it acquired its destructive connotations.

The first work to be formally called an apocalypse is the Apocalypse of John, more familiarly known as the Book of Revelation. Although the name comes from a Christian composition, the genre is much older, with Jewish apocalyptic literature appearing by at least the third century B.C.E. The earliest apocalyptic work was probably Zoroastrian.

Early Jewish apocalypses can be roughly divided into two principal groups. The first subgenre is what might be called “historical” apocalypses. These compositions, the most familiar of which is the Book of Daniel (the only apocalypse to be incorporated into the canonical scriptures),were extended prophecies presented in the form of allegorical visions (the Book of Revelation is clearly in this tradition). The other subgenre is narratives of otherworldly journeys, focused especially an ascent through a series of heavens, culminating in a vision of the throne of god.

In the contemporary period, the approach of the year 2000 on the Western calendar led to a heightened interest in popular belief about the possible end of the world, and most portrayals of the Endtime pictured an apocalyptic scenario. On the one hand, while there has been a steady production of predictions that the world is coming to an end over the last several centuries, their number slowly increased as the world reached the end of the second Christian millennium. There may or may not be a waning of such eschatological expectancy after the year 2001.

Much apocalyptic thought is tied to the Christian New Testament idea of a millennium, the predicted period of 1,000 years during which Satan would be chained and not allowed to pursue his evil work on earth. The arrival of the millennium has been a major theme in American Christian thought, the principal debate being whether the millennium would be brought in by a sudden act of God in the near future (prepremillennialism), emerge gradually as society became more Christian (postmillennialism), or not be a literal historical period (amillennialism).

Apocalypticism appears in every era and every culture but has become a uniquely vital theme in American religious life, especially since the rise of the Millerite movement in the 1830s. The failure of William Miller’s predictions in the 1840s led directly to the Bible Students movement, built around the predictions of Charles Taze Russell, in turn succeeded by the prophetic proclamation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.Within the emerging fundamentalist movement of the late nineteenth century, prophecy conferences provided hope for the eventual triumph of beleaguered evangelicals locked in a losing confrontation with modernists for control of American Protestant churches.As evangelicalism prospered in the twentieth century, it produced literally thousands of books advocating an expectancy of the near end of the world as we know it. Given the emphasis on this theme in American culture, it is no coincidence that a wide variety of American UFO prophets have received messages predicting an apocalyptic future. A closely related twist on this motif is represented in the frequent warnings about nuclear destruction that the Space Brothers communicated to humankind through contactees. This theme is also reflected in various ways in many films about contact with-or invasion by-extraterrestrial visitors.